My Colour Story Part Three – True Summer

My Colour Story

Part Three - True Summer

In this blog series I share my colour story. In Part One and Two, I discovered colour analysis a number of years ago, and eventually decided on Soft Summer. Let’s continue with my experiences trying to live as a Soft Summer, and why that didn’t work. My next step was was to try True Summer.

At this time during my colour story, I happened to have a lot of Soft Summer colours in my wardrobe. I liked the darker end of the palette, and felt really good in navy blue and dark purple. Next, I bought a scarf in a very greyed lavender (in hindsight, too greyed for a real Soft. It belonged to the many items nobody should wear). With a little goodwill, you could see it working.

I didn’t look particularly lit up or glowing or anything, but that was probably me. As a young woman, I thought it was just my lot in life to look a little dull. And so I went on for a couple of months.

Thankfully, eventually I did become aware that something was wrong there. I might not have been a Soft Summer after all. After all, there had to be a better option than dull skin and dark, colourless eyes.

But what should I change? Not back to Soft Autumn, probably. So why not go the other way in the Season circle, and try True Summer? It’s a tiny bit brighter, but still cool-toned. That might work.

I had to admit it. It was high time I got a colour analysis

I didn’t really have any colours around that seemed to match that palette, so I started scavenging items that looked promising from all over the house. It was winter by now, and there was little daylight. That didn’t stop me from trying cushion colours by lamplight, holding them underneath my face and hoping I’d see some clue. And washcloths, towels, and bedsheets. My mom’s clothes. An old dressing gown. Coffee mugs. Book covers. And even the cat, wiggling to get free (FYI, the cat’s Autumn).

Was it better? I couldn’t tell. The colours I believed to be True Summer (they probably weren’t really True Summer, very hard to guess without a palette), still didn’t feel quite right. Deep down, I had a secret wish to be a Winter, True Winter most of all. I had a sinking feel that that was probably out of reach, but I couldn’t help myself from trying on black eyeliner and red lipstick an embarrassing number of times.

I later swatched that red lipstick. It’s an oddity – I couldn’t have picked a worse choice for testing True Winter. It has the intensity of Bright Winter, a temperature very near Bright Spring, but an Autumn type of warmth. It’s now in my Winter makeup kit, as an example of ‘what not to buy’.

But back to my trying on colours. All this comparing got me absolutely nowhere. Still, I picked up a number of useful lessons.

Trying on colours in artificial lighting is pointless

Trying on colours in daylight is a little better, but doesn’t solve this next problem

Comparing items is only useful when you know in what palette they belong. Even if I did find something that looked better, how would I know what palette would go with it?

I had to admit it. It was high time I got a colour analysis. More on that next in the next part.